Biophilic Designed and Wellness Focused Housing

“Filtration systems for purified air and water provide peace of mind and a sense of wellbeing. Biophilic designs bridging indoor and outdoor spaces create harmony with the surrounding environment. Troon’s interventions in urban contexts open up new possibilities for city
dwellers seeking homes that foreground health, wellness and effortless living.”

Huh? Biophilic kind of works this way: “Because humans today spend 90% of our time indoors, according to the 2001 National Human Activity Pattern Survey, it’s necessary to bring the outdoors in and create indoor environments that reference nature in both obvious and subtle ways.

“At the simplest level, that means plants–and lots of them. This trend has even helped spur a boom in startups catering to plant-obsessed millennials in urban areas, where demand is so great growers report that they can’t keep up. But biophilic design is more than just adding plants to indoor spaces. It’s an ethos that poses interior design not merely as an aesthetic or functional discipline, but as a way to improve people’s mental and physical well-being.” Katherine Schwab, FastCompany.com, April 11^th. Bring nature indoors. 

Let add the wellness construct to this mix. It blends peaceful serenity with home health and fitness. Essentially, it brings a gym and spa into your immediate environment, in a quiet and peaceful way. But if you want to push the envelope, the expensive add is the way the home is constructed – light, air and sound. The biggest threat to contemporary life, beyond climate change, is simply how many of us are sleep-deprived in a modern environment. Lack of sleep increases stress, makes daily life harder and less pleasant and can physically be a life threat.

“Over 35% of American adults don’t get enough sleep, while 44% say their snooze got worse in the past five years. Is it any wonder our society has fetishized rest? The national “sleep epidemic” has inspired legacy brands and startups alike to hawk gadgets, tonics, trackers, ‘coaches,’ and smart mattresses. The U.S. sleep aid market is expected to grow to over $100 billion by 2023.

“Sleep, much like other health and wellness categories, has become something of a status symbol, a signifier of wealth, something that you spend money on to fix (as compared to the rest of us, for whom it just means what happens when you collapse out of exhaustion after a long day at work or taking care of children).

“So it’s no surprise that the ever-elusive slumber has been embraced by entrepreneurs, including real estate developers. It makes sense: If you spend a third of your time sleeping at home, shouldn’t it be fully optimized for snooze?

“Troon Pacific, a San Francisco-based development and investment management company, is leading the trend by designing luxury sleep-enhanced homes. It takes into account all construction, design, and materials to give clients a solid sleep—from insulating walls to reducing noises like humming and vibrating, filtering the air, and keeping temperatures consistent throughout the night.” Rina Raphael, FastCompany.com, September 6^th. The above photo is from the Troon website. Oh, their specially outfitted biophilic/wellness home – 8,350 square feet in the San Francisco Bay Area? It is big and in a pricey hood, but a real steal at a mere $29.8 million!

I have an easier approach to life that fits better with most people’s affordability capacity. First, list the places where your body spends the most time. Be specific. Prioritize those elements for expenditures. For me, it’s office chair, bed and car, in that order. So I spent a long time researching my chair, which cost way more than most (from Relax the Back, but I am older and have had back surgery), have a really good bed/mattress (firm, lots and lots of springs with a great topper) and even went upscale on the seat for my car (which has lasted me nine years with more to go). Because a quality chair (lifetime), bed (25 years) and car (10+ years) last longer, the price amortizes to reasonable… and my body sends me a thank-you note now and again. If you cannot find quiet, maybe a white noise generator is an OK substitute. Dark cool rooms without leaping pets… well, you know.

Whatever you can do to enhance sleep has to be good for you. Eating and drinking the wrong stuff, not getting enough exercise and the way you interpret everything around you (e.g., “that bastard cut me off” vs. “he must be really late for a very important date”) all factor into life and bad sleep. Life is tough enough without paying attention to those details you actually can and must control. To sleep, perchance to dream….

              I’m Peter Dekom, and even I have to take time out from ragging at the world to be a bit nicer to myself… you too should be nicer to yourself if you are not already.